Khoros Communities vs. Sitecore Digital Experience Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Khoros Communities
Score 8.5 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Khoros Communities is a fully-featured community platform, built for self-service support, education and collaboration. Organizations can host a vibrant space where customers can find answers, develop expertise, share experiences, and connect with their brand.N/A
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
The Sitecore Experience Platform (Sitecore XP) is a digital experience platform used to build websites and create customer experiences online. The solution boasts fast content authoring, built-in personalization features, testing and other optimizations, as well as analytics and marketing features.N/A
Pricing
Khoros CommunitiesSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Khoros CommunitiesSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing is variable based on the needs of the customer.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Khoros CommunitiesSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Khoros CommunitiesSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Khoros Communities
-
Ratings
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
9.3
31 Ratings
12% above category average
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings9.331 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Khoros Communities
-
Ratings
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
9.7
28 Ratings
15% above category average
API00 Ratings9.927 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings9.525 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Khoros Communities
-
Ratings
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
8.5
31 Ratings
11% above category average
WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings8.031 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness00 Ratings8.529 Ratings
Admin section00 Ratings8.330 Ratings
Page templates00 Ratings9.028 Ratings
Library of website themes00 Ratings8.416 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design00 Ratings8.027 Ratings
Publishing workflow00 Ratings8.429 Ratings
Form generator00 Ratings9.428 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Khoros Communities
-
Ratings
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
8.6
30 Ratings
17% above category average
Content taxonomy00 Ratings9.028 Ratings
SEO support00 Ratings8.426 Ratings
Bulk management00 Ratings8.624 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions00 Ratings8.528 Ratings
Community / comment management00 Ratings8.426 Ratings
Results and Analysis
Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Product A and Product B
Khoros Communities
-
Ratings
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
7.5
10 Ratings
13% below category average
Conversion tracking00 Ratings7.69 Ratings
Test reporting00 Ratings7.410 Ratings
Funnel Analysis00 Ratings7.310 Ratings
User Segmentation00 Ratings7.510 Ratings
Digital Experience Platform
Comparison of Digital Experience Platform features of Product A and Product B
Khoros Communities
-
Ratings
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
8.0
12 Ratings
14% below category average
Campaign management00 Ratings7.812 Ratings
Cloud enablement00 Ratings8.312 Ratings
Content aggregation00 Ratings8.212 Ratings
Content classification00 Ratings8.312 Ratings
Multi-channel content personalization00 Ratings7.812 Ratings
Customer data analytics00 Ratings7.411 Ratings
DXP Third-Party Integrations00 Ratings7.712 Ratings
Multi-website management00 Ratings8.711 Ratings
Digital asset management00 Ratings8.112 Ratings
Editorial workflows and task management00 Ratings8.111 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Khoros CommunitiesSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Small Businesses
PowerDMS by NEOGOV
PowerDMS by NEOGOV
Score 7.7 out of 10
Yext
Yext
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PowerDMS by NEOGOV
PowerDMS by NEOGOV
Score 7.7 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Salesforce Experience Cloud
Salesforce Experience Cloud
Score 8.4 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Khoros CommunitiesSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(94 ratings)
9.0
(41 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.7
(7 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Usability
5.0
(3 ratings)
9.0
(16 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
5.0
(5 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
4.5
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.5
(85 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Khoros CommunitiesSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
Khoros Communities is my go-to when I'm part of a big company with lots of customers who want to help each other. It's awesome for talking about products, giving ideas to make them better, and getting help when I need it. If my team is spread out or we're working from home, Khoros Communities is handy for sharing updates and working together. It's also a good tool for events, helping with planning and discussing what happened. But if my group is small or not very active, or if I just need a simple place to chat without too many extras, Khoros Communities might be more than I need. Plus, I've got to be ready to keep an eye on things to keep the community positive, and it works best when I have a plan to grow and keep the community lively.
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Sitecore
Sitecore offers Content Hub with Product Content Management and Content Management Platform. The Digital Experience Platform and Content Hub can both host structured content and publish the finalized version to Experience Edge. Both platforms offer different ways to manage content. During a technical and business evaluation, the evaluation panel must understand the difference between a Content Modelling focused approach, or a layout management focused approach. Sitecore Digital Experience Platform is also best not to be used to host many files and images in the Media Library. That responsibility should be offloaded to a digital asset management company like Sitecore Content Hub DAM. The technology evaluation panel must also understand how to work with a Headless CMS, where the HEAD needs to be hosted, and the costs associated with the HEAD. Composable DXP is fantastic, but everyone must understand the various cost components. Marketers and the data team will need to go into the CDP and Personalize the platform with an excellent understanding of how a composable "installation" works. All the Martech vendors have similar challenges that data and development teams need to work through with a full experience. Any CDP/analytics platform will, at some stage, require further data enrichment from other sources. Understanding the Sitecore Search features and limitations is also essential.
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Pros
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
  • Increase in suggestions from our clients to know what we should improve.
  • Reduce technical support costs and incredibly increase sales.
  • It helps to interact with customers and we receive positive and negative reviews and based on their comments we can make changes that increase sales.
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Sitecore
  • Comprehensive Solution: Sitecore offers a fully integrated suite of products that cover the full spectrum of DXP capabilities, including search, personalization experimentation and more, delivering a complete composable DXP solution for customers.
  • Beyond Headless: XM Cloud provides more than just headless capabilities, featuring in-built tools like authoring host, page editor, etc., enabling faster and more powerful implementations.
  • Focus on AI: Sitecore has now got an excellent AI offering called Stream; it looks promising; however, it would be too early to give feedback on the same.
  • Customization: Sitecore's backend is highly customizable, allowing for deep modifications through pipelines and patch configurations.
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Cons
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
  • Self Service, Low and No Code. The Community Managers should be able to some UI Tasks by self with doing any code updates.
  • Salesforce Integration: The basic Integration should also include the basic level of business requirement. (Contacts and Accounts Mapping)
  • Slack Connector Update: There is no update on this connector till the time its launch. The other team has lot of options to push the notification in multiple slack channels. And unfortunately Khoros does not. This creates a lot work for Community team to bring internal teams to the community to respond or acknowledge an post.
  • More Integrations: Since now the Khoros communities does not comes up with the integrations with basic support tools like JIRA, Confluence, Github etc.
  • Search Improvisation: Apart from last search update there is no updates we see in this feature. The team should think of Putting Some AI based Search into the community which helps the Community managers to manage the content accordingly
  • Some update on AI and Gen AI: Khoros communities did not shared any thoughts about their plans for putting these technology in community
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Sitecore
  • Experience Editor is a little old fashioned and sometimes slow to use.
  • Bulk operations in the Content Editor
  • Sitecore serialization is should be part of the Content Editor to provide visual reference for items which are serialized and will be overwritten by future deployments similar to what Unicorn does so well
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Likelihood to Renew
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give Khoros Communities a solid 8. The system is extremely easy to use, enabling our team and community members to navigate and interact with the platform with ease. The wide range of features offered by Khoros Communities has greatly enriched our online interactions and improved the efficiency of our customer service. The technical support team has also been extremely helpful, could be quicker sometimes for answering our questions but they efficiently resolving any problems we have encountered. The platform is perfectly scalable, capable of handling our growing user base without any performance problems. What's more, Khoros Communities offers excellent integration capabilities with our other software tools, making our operations smoother and more efficient
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Sitecore
Sitecore has proven that it can deliver on its promise of a robust, reliable enterprise CMS solution with plenty of features. Also, they keep updating it with more and better features. Now that we are highly trained on it we have started on getting the most out of it and we plan to keep doing more of that in the future.
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Usability
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
Like every backend, it can always be improved upon. The excellent thing is that Khoros have a hugely active customer support community as well as a fantastic case management system to triage support issues and requests. So regardless of your level of knowledge or familiarity, you're well supported out of the box.
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Sitecore
Once you learn how to use the platform and can put a solid strategy in place to manage it long-term, it becomes a lot easier to use. The tricky part is working with resources who are familiar with the platform to navigate some of the common implementation and configuration pitfalls. Although Sitecore has worked very hard to overcome some of these from their earlier product versions by creating wizards and improving their support documentation, at the end of the day it is still a very complex and powerful system that needs to be implemented carefully in order to foster the best possible user experience for authors. So it could be rated very usable or not usable at all based on how much planning took place and the quality of the implementation.
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Reliability and Availability
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
I've hardly ever seen downtime in any of their production communities. There's the occasional reboot needed for config reasons or if patches are applied, but these take place after customer approval and typically last only a few minutes.
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Sitecore
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
They are responsive and proactive. They are really on top of things. They send personal emails to check in on you. It feels like they really know you. You only get emails from 3-4 people at Khoros – they must be customer assigned.
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Sitecore
1. Customized software development & maintenance. 2. Technology Consulting - Consulting-based services for technology solutions data engineering or cloud solutions. 3. Used for tapping into multiple data sources such as CRM and marketing automation systems and, creating automated data extracts with a high-end visual representation of data. 4. Implemented for scheduling an existing report to automatically refresh and be delivered to specific users at a specific regular interval.
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In-Person Training
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
I think it is engaging and has good instructors.
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Sitecore
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
It was out of the box training - pre-recorded/ not live. There was nothing for more advanced topics like APIs. They do have a good knowledge base and community that you can access and folks in there are responsive. I would however like more advanced training options.
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Sitecore
Sitecore captures and remembers every single interaction your customers and prospects have in any part of the system, allowing you to build comprehensive, ever-learning profiles of each individual. From email marketing, to social media, to online shopping, Sitecore remembers where each interaction left off so you can automatically continue the conversation. Sitecore helps you manage your content for each and every experience your customers enjoy. Customize what content you want and the system will take care of how it's displayed.
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Implementation Rating
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
We were up against a hard stop with Jive’s contract ending and Khoros connected us with a deployment partner to do accelerated deployment using a template approach. It could have happened in 2 weeks. We did not end up going that way since we wanted more customization. Lithium handled technical stuff like migration, but a lot of the process is self-deployment. It’s one of the ways they teach use of the system is having the user self-implement.

Overall, the implementation was super easy to do. Doing single sign-on (SSO) was the only hard part. The implementation ended up taking nine weeks total, but in hindsight, we could have done in it six. Most of the implementation time was spent in course work, which consisted of on-demand training - approximately 7-8 hours that you are required for you to do, before they turn on the system. During this nine week period, about 50% of my time was spent on implementation.

We had a deployment manager who we were able to email 1-1. I leaned on him heavily. He was great at all hours, for example, they would call back at 7pm PST. They were very responsive.

Content migration strategy is important to consider. Moving from an existing community you need to strategically choose how your layout will be. Two different systems will have two different ways to format communities. For example, Jive has communities with sub-communities, whereas Khoros has community, category, and boards.

Contact migration is also an important consideration. You need to think through how you are going to move contacts from your old community to a new one. For example, are you going to create new logins and passwords? We were hoping to use the integration with Salesforce.com to be a portal, but ended up using an in-house solution that works well to maintain same the same logins. The next related question is are you going to be able to keep them connected to all the posts in your old community? We migrated old posts. If you have a tech-savvy team, you can do a self-migration. Khoros has a migration services team that we utilized. It cost us $10k to move content and posts were kept tied to the user.

The next consideration is your launch/promotion plan. Khoros helped us out and gave us a lot of examples. They shared pre-launch email dates, follow-up emails, FAQ pages (e.g. to explain why switching, why better).
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Sitecore
Make sure you work with a partner that can help you take advantage of the entire platform. Specifically we see a lot of customers not taking advantage of Sitecore DMS and thus missing a huge opportunity. Sitecore is a platform that is meant to be constantly optimized and improved upon.
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Alternatives Considered
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
Large companies and organizations with complex community needs are well served by Khoros communities. The platform's advanced analytics and reporting features helps organizations seeking deeper insights. The gamification is the best way to boost user engagement, Khoros Communities has a rich feature set. Also with customization options offered by Khoros Communities, companies can develop a unique and customized community experience.
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Sitecore
Sitefinity is improving but at the time of decision making it had nothing that could compare with the A/B testing and personalisation features that Sitecore offers. This was a key differentiator and ultimately ensured Sitecore was purchased. WordPress isn't really comparable and isn't within our technology stack, which is mostly Microsoft.
Read full review
Scalability
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
I think I would give Khoros an overall 7, while there were things we really liked about it. I also saw things that just did not work well for us. We like using iG but it was not the friendliest in using it on that platform. Sometimes the software would glitch or lag which is not helpful during high critical moments
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Sitecore
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
  • We are able to see what our different cohorts of customers are doing within the community, and we are able to create content and programs based on the engagement we get from these different groups.
  • We have been able to start an Idea Exchange space where our customers can share, vote, and comment on features they would like to see in our products. It quickly became a very popular place within the Community.
  • With the discussion forums, we are able to use the Accepted Solutions functions to help deflect tickets and Support interactions working on a 1-to-many scale.
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Sitecore
  • ROI depends on what features the customer wants to leverage from Sitecore. Sitecore is not just a CMS. It's CEP platform which comes with Analytics, Personalization, A/B Testing, and Email for marketers modules etc., out of the box.
  • Based on my experience some of the customers lean towards third party services. This is primarily due to lack of the understanding of these features. If a customer leverages these out of the box features ROI will be high. It depends on how much is being [sent] to third parties services.
  • Sitecore has very good accelerators in the market. These accelerators allows you to create response sites very quickly. If a simple campaign site takes 50K to build the site may save at least 50% of that cost. Examples of site accelerators are Brainjocks, Keystone, Cognifide etc.
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ScreenShots

Khoros Communities Screenshots

Screenshot of page design templates. These allow for on-the-fly customization and updates without a development team.Screenshot of page overview under the Designer tab. Easily organize content and make changes to page layout to improve the experience for community members.Screenshot of a conversation in the community. Engagement features allow users to collaborate, trouble-shoot and self-serve.Screenshot of Agent Assist in Khoros. This feature allows community moderators to reply to conversations faster and with better responses.Screenshot of the Analytics dashboard. Monitor key metrics to determine how members are interacting in the community.